Sonnets to Orpheus

Sonnets to Orpheus

Front cover of Rilke's 'Sonnets to Orpheus', 1923
Author	Rainer Maria Rilke
Original title	Die Sonette an Orpheus
Language	German
Genre	Poetry
Publisher	Insel-Verlag
Publication date	1923 (1923)
Original text	Die Sonette an Orpheus at German Wikisource

The Sonnets to Orpheus (

At the same time in February 1922, Rilke had completed work on his deeply philosophical and mystical ten-poem collection entitled Duino Elegies which had taken ten years to complete. The Sonnets to Orpheus and the Duino Elegies are considered Rilke's masterpieces and the highest expressions of his talent.^[2]

Writing and publication history

Château de Muzot and the "savage creative storm"

Through most of the 1910s, Rilke had suffered from a severe depression that had kept him from writing. He had begun his Duino Elegies in 1912, and completed parts of it in 1913 and 1915 before being rendered silent by a psychological crisis caused by the events of World War I and his brief conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army.^[5] Only in 1920 was he motivated to focus toward completing the Elegies. However, for the next two years, his mode of life was unstable and did not permit him the time or mental state he needed for his writing.

In 1921, Rilke journeyed to Switzerland, hoping to immerse himself among French culture near

With news of the death of his daughter's friend, Wera Knoop, Rilke was inspired to create and set to work on Sonnets to Orpheus.[4]^: p.481 Within a few days, between 2 February and 5 February 1922, he had completed the first section of 26 sonnets. For the next few days, he focused on the Duino Elegies, completing them on the evening of 11 February. Immediately after, he returned to work on the Sonnets and completed the following section of 29 sonnets in less than two weeks. In letters to friends, Rilke referred to this three-week period as a "savage creative storm."^[3] Rilke considered both collections to be "of the same birth."^[3][6] Writing to his former lover, Lou Andreas-Salomé, on 11 February, he described this period as "...a boundless storm, a hurricane of the spirit, and whatever inside me is like thread and webbing, framework, it all cracked and bent. No thought of food."^{[4]: p.492 [7]}

Throughout the Sonnets, Wera appears in frequent references to her, both direct where he addresses her by name and indirect as allusions to a "dancer" or the mythical Eurydice. Later, Rilke wrote to the young girl's mother stating that Wera's ghost was "commanding and impelling" him to write.^[8][9]

Form and style

The sonnets

There are 55 sonnets in the sequence, divided into two sections: the first of 26 and the second of 29. The sonnets follow certain trends, but they include many different forms.

All of the sonnets are composed of two quatrains followed by two tercets.

The sonnet tradition is not as pronounced in German literature as it is, for example, in English and Italian literature. A possible model for Rilke might have been

The content of the sonnets is, as is typical of Rilke, highly metaphorical. The work is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The character of Orpheus (whom Rilke refers to as the "god with the lyre"^[10]) appears several times in the cycle, as do other mythical characters such as Daphne. Sources for this are primarily Ovid's Metamorphoses and to a lesser extent Virgil's Georgics. The principle of Ovidian transformations can also be found in and especially between the sonnets. During the first sonnet of Orphic singing, the speech of the forest and the animals is "transformed" into a girl in the second sonnet: And almost a girl it was who emerged / from this joyful unity of song and lyre... During the second sonnet, the focus shifts from the girl to the world: She slept the world... The cycle also contains biblical allusions, including a reference to Esau. Other themes involve animals, peoples of different cultures, and time and death.

While Rilke invokes the original poet Orpheus, a poetic self-reflection takes place at the same time. It frequently addresses the conditions of poetry, the nature of art: Song is being. For the god, a simple matter. / But when are we? (I,3) A solution to these problems can be found in the fifth sonnet of the first part, where Rilke exclaims: Once and forever it's Orpheus, whenever there's song (I,5). This means that the poem always possesses a divine quality, as the poet stands in direct succession to the son of the Muses.

Although Rilke claimed that the entire cycle was inspired by Wera, she appears as a character in only one of the poems. He insisted, however, that "Wera's own figure [...] nevertheless governs and moves the course of the whole".^[11]

In May 1922, after deciding he could afford the cost of considerable necessary renovation, the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart bought Muzot so that Rilke could live there rent-free, and became Rilke's patron.^[12] He completed the Duino Elegies while Reinhart's tenant.^[13] During this time, Reinhart introduced Rilke to his protégée, the Australian violinist Alma Moodie.^[14] Rilke was so impressed with her playing that he wrote in a letter: "What a sound, what richness, what determination. That and the Sonnets to Orpheus, those were two strings of the same voice. And she plays mostly Bach! Muzot has received its musical christening..."^[14][15][16]

Criticism

From early on, there was criticism of Rilke's Sonnets. Thus, already in 1927 Robert Musil described Rilke as the poet who "did nothing but perfect the German poem for the first time", but he limited this judgement to the Duino Elegies as the pinnacle of artistic creation, and described Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus as an "exceptional falling off that Rilke's work suffers".^[17] What Wolfram Groddeck referred to in his afterword to the Reclam edition as a "dilemma of critical reading", was a result of the uncompromising text, which resists simple interpretation. At the same time the quality of lyrical expression undoubtedly constitutes a highlight of German poetic history. Thus, the criticism of the sonnets often fluctuates between the assumption of a sonic primacy over the semantic level and an unconditional affirmation of the cycle.^{[according to whom?]}

Text examples

First sonnet

Da stieg ein Baum. O reine Übersteigung! O Orpheus singt! O hoher Baum im Ohr. Und alles schwieg. Doch selbst in der Verschweigung ging neuer Anfang, Wink und Wandlung vor. Tiere aus Stille drangen aus dem klaren gelösten Wald von Lager und Genist; und da ergab sich, daß sie nicht aus List und nicht aus Angst in sich so leise waren, sondern aus Hören. Brüllen, Schrei, Geröhr schien klein in ihren Herzen. Und wo eben kaum eine Hütte war, dies zu empfangen, ein Unterschlupf aus dunkelstem Verlangen mit einem Zugang, dessen Pfosten beben, - da schufst du ihnen Tempel im Gehör.

There rose a tree. O pure transcendence! O Orpheus sings! O tall tree in the ear! And all was silent. Yet still in this silence proceeded new beginning, sign and transformation. Creatures of stillness pressed out of the clear unravelled forest from lair and nest; and it came to pass, that not by cunning and not out of fear were they made so quiet, but simply out of hearing. Bellow, scream, roar seemed small in their hearts. And just where there was scarcely a hut to receive this, a shelter of darkest longing with an entrance, whose posts shook, - you built for them a temple in hearing.

References

Notes